PATH OF EVOLUTION 



his name, and to which he transferred much of the 

 riches of Rome and many of its most prominent 

 citizens. Rome was no longer the literary centre. 

 Most of the Latin authors of this and of the next 

 century were Gauls by birth and habitation. The 

 Greek language, which had been read and spoken in 

 Rome for several centuries by all persons of culture, 

 began to pass into disuse in the western branch of 

 the empire. In Constantinople it continued to be 

 the language of literature, though the transactions of 

 the government were officially in Latin. 



Throughout the first three centuries of the empire 

 the doctrines of the various sects of philosophy had 

 been taught in the schools of the several great cities, 

 especially in those of Athens and of Alexandria. The 

 most prominent among the philosophies were those of 

 Plato, of Aristotle, of Epicurus, and of the Stoics; the 

 first especially, whose teachings preceded those of the 

 founder of Christianity by over three hundred and 

 seventy years, had exerted and continued to exert a 

 dominating power over the minds of learned and of 

 thinking men. To its influence and to that of the 

 Stoics was probably due the introduction into the 

 Fourth Gospel of the doctrine of the Logos. The writ- 

 ings of Philo Juclseus (born about 20 B. C. and died 

 about 50 A.D.) had brought the Greek philosophies 

 already known to the Hellenistic Jews more vividly 



